Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Hey Good Looking!

It was about 7 o'clock at night when someone I know and love started mumbling about being hungry. It was about 7:45 by the time we made it home from the day's thrilling adventure in Union Square's Sur La Table. (No joke, it was really exciting, of course, I wanted to take everything home with me.) Assuring Adam I would in fact be able to provide a fantastic meal in a few minutes, and armed with brand new cooking tools, I headed into the kitchen. Lucky for me, we had three sweet potatoes, a bag of yukons, an eggplant, and some yogurt in the refrigerator. Here's what happened:

Sweet and Yukon Gold Curried Mashed Potatoes wrapped in Eggplant

1. Pre-heat oven.1a. Wash, peel, and cut into small chunks all of the potatoes and sweet potatoes.2. Put them in water, bring to a boil, simmer until soft enough to mash3. Wash eggplant. Using your mandolin set on "relatively" thin, slice eggplant into strips. The middle slices work best because they are the widest.***I realize not everyone has a mandolin, or like me, has one, but perhaps had a little incident making french fries that concluded with wrapping many band-aids around her fingers. In such an event, simply slice the eggplant in half length-wise, place the flat side down, and cut slices away from you.4. Spray the eggplant with a little bit of oil or butter. Cook eggplant ever so slightly that it becomes pliable. Put on baking sheet and set aside5. By now, the potatoes should be ready. Drain the liquid from the potatoes.6. Add salt, pepper, yogurt, ghee or butter, cumin, cayenne pepper, and curry power to the potatoes, all to taste.7. Using potato masher or emulsion blender, turn the potatoes into mashed potatoes.8. Once you have mashed potatoes to your liking, place spoonfuls onto eggplant slices.9. Fold eggplant slices over mash, place them seam-side down on the baking sheet.10. Put in oven and leave it there until you feel like taking it out - about 20 minutes.11. Make couscous according to package directions.

So I make this and there are leftovers, but Adam keeps telling me how good it is and its very nice and dinner goes on. After packing it up in Tupperware and putting it in the fridge I forget that its there and leave it to languish in the refrigerator. A few days later, Adam comes home from work and he says, "Everyone wanted to know where I got my lunch today." So I asked, "Well, where did you get you lunch?" And he says, "I brought the mashed potatoes wrapped with the eggplant." And there you have it, dinner (and lunch) that's good, easy, and good-looking. (Will add pictures once I receive them.)